


Death Defying

by Archet



Category: Actor RPF, British Actor RPF, The Lord of the Rings RPF
Genre: Alternate Universe, Death as a character, M/M, Near Death Experiences, Poisoning, Reapers, everyone lives except the bad guy, halloween fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-28
Updated: 2020-08-28
Packaged: 2021-03-06 16:34:36
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,237
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26151991
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Archet/pseuds/Archet
Summary: Sean has a near death experience and Viggo makes a choice.
Relationships: Sean Bean/Viggo Mortensen
Comments: 3
Kudos: 3





	Death Defying

**Author's Note:**

> Disclaimer: this is fiction, for entertainment purposes only and in no way implies anything as to the real lives to the lovely men who are inspirations for these characters. No money made here, just fantasies.  
> Feedback: welcomed and appreciated.  
> Author Note: written for Halloween way back when, just now finally posting to AO3.

Sean popped the pills into his mouth and washed them down with a long swig of water. He frowned at the unusually bitter aftertaste, but didn’t think much of it. Setting the water glass on the nightstand by the bed, he slid down onto his pillow, reached out and clicked off the lamp. Darkness settled over the bedroom and Sean lay still, waited for the medicine to work its magic and ease the throb of the migraine that had taken up stubborn residence behind his eyes.

Drowsiness descended swiftly, and Sean sank gratefully into it, dozing lightly for some time. The moon reigned high in the clear dark sky, when he startled awake, a pounding in his ears. Several moments passed before Sean realized the pounding was his own heartbeat, beating like a mad, trapped thing. He froze, listened for some other sound that might’ve disturbed him, but heard nothing except the ticking of the clock in the hall, the gust of the wind swishing the leaves of the birch tree outside his bedroom window. 

The pearl-white disk of the full moon filled the top right corner of the window, cast down luminous moonlight. Long bars of it filtered through the birch’s branches and threw wavering shadows against the wall opposite his bed. Sean stared at the meld of silvery shapes and shadows and listened to the small noises of the night, the ticking clock, the occasional creak of the house settling, the susurration of the leaves in the wind. 

Sean felt cold, suddenly, so much so that he shivered with it, but the short walk to the wardrobe to fetch an extra blanket seemed an impossible distance. He turned onto his side, tucked his face against the pillow and pulled the covers up past his nose. For a few moments that seemed to help, but he quickly felt stifled. Nudging the blanket back, his frowned as his hands shook. 

_Fucking freezing in here_.

A movement out of the corner of his eye drew his gaze to the window. For an instant he had the impression of something perched in the tree, silhouetted against the full moon. A bird? An owl? He blinked, and finding it hard to focus, groped for the bedside lamp, breathing harder than before. He fumbled for the switch, hand clumsy, and only succeeded in overbalancing the lamp. The whole kit tumbled to the floor, dragging the alarm clock, water glass and pill bottle along with it.

 _Fucking hell._.

Sean sank back again the pillow, hands fisting in the blanket, chest heaving. The bed was spinning and he felt sick. Clammy sweat broke out over his brow and he shuddered, teeth chattering. He’d never felt so cold in all his life. 

He needed something…needed to get to the phone. Must ring someone. Emergency.

The thoughts skidded across his mind and he pushed at the blanket but seemed only to get hopelessly tangled. Disoriented, he felt the ice-edge of panic when he couldn’t seem to get free of the fucking bed. The room dimmed before his eyes, pitched him into darkness as deep and cold as the bottom of a well. He labored for breath, gasped for it as if it would be his last.

Inevitably, he subsided, falling back against the pillow, fingers clenched in the hem of the blanket. The panic faded into a placid haze, and the cold seemed less important. His heartbeat slowed, and Sean was glad the mad pounding had calmed. He strained to hear the familiar tick of the hallway clock, and couldn’t. He wondered in a disjointed way if it needed winding again.

A strange brightness flared at the edge of his vision, golden, warm, as if someone had opened the door to a brightly lit room down the hall. There was movement, but no sound, but somewhere between him and the light something cast a brief shadow.

“Lo?” he called, voice little more than a rasp. The strained quality of his voice startled him. No one answered. 

Sean tried again, but this time managed only a soft mewl. A rush of feeling took hold of him, as immediate and shocking as a slap in the face. He was pissed, suddenly, and bloody fucking hell, but this wasn’t right-couldn’t be-and Sean fought to hold to his bright anger. He wanted to curse and kick and _fight_. 

Another flare of light and Sean struck out, arm flailing at it-whatever it was-at whatever had done this to him. He was caught, then, an unyielding grip about his wrist. Warmth bled into him from the point of contact, an astonishing flood of golden, brilliant _heat_. Sean sagged into it, eyes fluttering closed, lips moving on a wordless prayer of thanks.

“Shh,” a soft voice soothed, close by his ear. “You’re safe now.”

Sean drew in a deep, slow breath, and blew it out again, the chaotic rhythms of his body calming like a ship settling after a storm. Recognition filtered into him along with the warmth that was so glorious to hold he could barely whisper past it. “Viggo?”

“Yes, Sean,” and lips pressed to his forehead, moved against his skin. “Be still. Go to sleep. Rest, Sean.”

Sean obeyed, body instantly going slack in Viggo’s embrace. 

“You’re very good at that, you know.”

Viggo waited until he’d tucked Sean snugly under the blanket before he turned and took in the black clad figure of a man at the foot of Sean’s bed. “Well, you’d be the one to know,” he said.

The man smiled, the expression deliberate and sharp and strangely fond, all at once. “I suppose you’re right.”

Viggo shrugged without comment. 

“I see you’re set on saving this one,” the man observed, gaze intent on Sean’s sleeping form.

Viggo crossed his arms. “I have saved him,” he said flatly.

“Viggo.” The name was made a warning. “We both know his condition is entirely reversible. What has been saved can just as easily be diminished. So fragile. Funny, how sometimes that still comes as a surprise.”

Viggo stood unmoving at the bedside. “We’re all fragile, one way or another.”

“Ever the philosopher,” was the amused reply. 

Viggo wondered briefly what would happen if the average person knew that the stuff of their nightmares was a 6’2, hazel-eyed, lean-limbed figure of a man with mussed dark hair and a handsome smile.

“You do realize,” he continued when Viggo offered no answer, “I must collect _someone_ tonight. That rule is absolute, Viggo.”

Viggo knew the rule well. Anyone who didn’t suffered for it, and in ways that was better left unexplored. He stooped and picked up the lamp, switched it back on though he could see just as well without it. Picked up the prescription bottle Sean had knocked to the floor, and held it out.

“Take this son of a bitch, then. Personally, I think he’s pretty fucking overdue.”

The hazel eyes didn’t even glance at the pharmacist’s name printed on the label. “Of course he is.” A pause. “But then, it isn’t our place to set the appointed time, is it?”

“Maybe-maybe not…maybe it should be,” Viggo said slowly, dropping the bottle into the trash can. His eyes tracked the man’s movement as he sat on the end of the bed and reached out a long fingered hand, settled it on the blanket over Sean’s foot. 

“You shouldn’t speak of such things, and we’re _not_ having this conversation again.”

Viggo wisely offered no reply

“You’re going to have to come to a resolution about this, my friend. Your love for this one…is a distraction. Surely, you know you cannot show him what you truly are, and let him live.”

Viggo stiffened. “I know.”

“Do you?” A simple query, and Viggo looked up, chilled by the sharply hewn smile; he was mesmerized by the hazel eyes, glinting in the lamplight, which seemed as depthless as the spaces between the stars. 

“You _ache_ to share your true self with him.” This wasn’t a guess. “You always were too honest.” The man caressed Sean’s ankle gently through the blanket, and Sean mumbled in his sleep. 

Dark eyes stared down at Sean’s relaxed face. “He really is quite sumptuous, Viggo. I see why you love him, crave him, so deeply.”

Viggo instinctively knew this wasn’t meant as an appreciation of Sean’s physical beauty. The man sitting on the end of Sean’s bed was much more interested in the deeper working of a person. Physical attributes were little more than nice or interesting scenery. This man possessed the power to unravel a soul as easily as Viggo might unravel a ball of yarn.

“You wonder what he might say, were he to know the true Raphael Viggo Alonso Mortensen.”

Viggo drew in a sharp breath, having not heard his given name spoken aloud in over two centuries. 

“You wonder what he might think. Would he let you touch him, if he truly knew you?” Shrewd eyes captured Viggo’s, bored into him. “Would he let you push your hungry cock into his pretty ass, if he knew what you really are?”

Jaw clenched, Viggo could only shake his head. “I don’t know.”

“Of course you don’t.”

“I need him,” Viggo snapped. 

“We all need something, my friend.”

“I won’t let him go, not tonight,” Viggo swore, trembled with the effort not to shrink from the darkness that pooled in the other’s man eyes.

“Viggo,” his name was spoken softly. “Are you willfully defying Death?”

Viggo could not reply, could not even manage a single word, and in the room the shadows lingering just outside the spill of lamplight deepened, and in them there were glittering flashes, like moonlight reflecting off obsidian.

Viggo dropped to one knee, turned his face from the sight of Death resting casually on the end of Sean’s bed, backed by the shadow of ancient power. He bowed his head, fingers curled into fists at his sides. He wanted to pray, but kept his mind still.

The touch against his hair was enough to tell him he would survive the night, and wouldn’t be pitched into the dark ether. “You, my friend, are a brave, foolish soul.”

Despite himself, Viggo lifted his head, looked wordlessly up into the handsome face above him. 

“You are among the most talented of my Reapers, an example to the others,” this was admitted with an easy fondness. “You deliver souls safely into my waiting arms without fear, without the flail of panic, wrapped in your competent compassion.” 

Cool fingers curled beneath Viggo’s chin, tilted his face up properly. “I think, perhaps, you deserve a reward, for all your years of service.” The words fell silken from Death’s lips, imbued with all the power the man possessed.

Viggo shivered. 

“I shall loose you, for a short time. You may go idle for the rest of this current disguises’ natural life, as it would be perceived.”

Death held Viggo’s face in his hands, stared deep into his eyes. “But when next I call, you _will_ take up the mantel of our work, and you _will_ bring your lovely Sean with you.”

Eyes wide, Viggo could only breathe, held fast in the grip of the binding Death laid upon him. “You have taken it upon yourself to save him, to disturb the Order, so then you will take it upon yourself to make the Choice for him.”

Death leaned down, pressed his warm lips against Viggo’s forehead. “You will both Reap for me, and you will have your Sean by your side, for as long as you can bear.”

It was all Viggo craved, and everything he feared, and his heart sang with the knowledge that Sean would be _his_ , possibly forever. 

With a final caress Death drew back, and the obsidian shadows that had sharpened and flashed melted into a more natural darkness.

“Pray he doesn’t hate you, for saving him,” Death offered with a charming smile, and retreated, becoming a dark sinuous figure among the night. “Go now, and claim what I have given. Look to me no more until I call.”

A shadow passed over the moon, a blot that stole the heavenly light from the room, and then was gone, having passed from the house.

Breathing heavily, Viggo hurriedly shed his clothes and slid into bed beneath the covers. Sean’s green eyes opened, vibrant, questioning, looked at him with such complete trust. 

Viggo pressed down upon him, and took the life Death had given him.

_Epilogue_

“Bloody hell,” Sean muttered standing before the coffee pot, one hip against the kitchen counter and nose buried in the morning paper. “Did you see this bit?”

Viggo slid his arm around Sean’s waist, pressed close from behind, read the bold black headline over Sean’s shoulder.

 **“Local Chemist Suicide: 13 Patient Deaths Suspicious-Under Investigation”**.

“Yeah,” Viggo breathed against the nape of Sean’s neck and pressed his pleased smile against Sean’s skin. “I heard all about it.”

END

My visual inspiration for Mr. D:  


The idea of the Reaper comes from the long canceled HBO series ‘Dead Like Me’ which was actually more a comedy, than anything, where certain people were denied access to ‘crossing over’ and made to remain on earth as Reapers, their responsibility being to usher people safely on their way to the ‘other side’ at the moment of their death. (I know-it doesn’t *sound* funny, but it was, and oddly touching, too).


End file.
